To:THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE R.S.D.L.P.

From Lenin to the C.C.

Published:First published in 1926 inLenin Miscellany V.

      Sent from Geneva to St. Petersburg.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1977],

      Moscow,Volume 43,

      pages163b-164.Translated:Martin Parker and Bernard IsaacsTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

DearFriends,

1)Iam sending you a draft contract with Malykh for approval by the
entire
C.C.[1]I advise approval, since there are a lot of people here who
have nothing else to live on, and the Party cannot support them (including
editors and contributors ofProletary). This is a serious
question, which I would beg you not to decide offhand; otherwise there is
liable to be a desperate crisis.

2)Iadvise raising the 50 per cent to 100 per cent. Malykh ought to
agree.

3)Besure to get an undertaking from her at once to submit to
ideologicalguidance(and not only control) by a person to be
agreed upon between herself and the C.C. This is quite possible, she will
agree; this point is enormously important in principle, and its practical
significance for the future will also be very great.

4)Youare placing me and especially yourselves in an impossible
position vis-à-vis the International Bureau by not appointing a
representative to the conference and not sending C.C. members here as
promised.[2]For heavens sake can’t you see that in this way you are
setting the entire international Social-Democracy against you. I already
have an inquiry from the International Bureau concerning the strange
silence of the C.C. (I replied that you agree in principle to a conference
without arbitration, that you will soon send delegates, and that talks are
now going on in Russia between the Organising Commission and the C.C.).

Itis necessary to give the International Bureau a precise and clear
official answer, otherwise you will seriously compromise yourselves, it
will look as if you were evading the
issue.[3]

5)Ihave lost all hope of your coming. Why didn’t you write a word
about the end of Sysoika? Let me know whether you have definitely given up
the idea of coming. In general there has been no news from you about anyone
for over a month.

6)Asregards Plekhanov, I can pass on some local rumours for your
information. He is obviously angry with us for having exposed him in the
eyes of the International Bureau, he swears like a stevedore in No. 2 ofDnevnik
Sotsial-Demokrata.[4]There is talk of his putting out his own
paper, or returning toIskra. The conclusion: he should be
regarded with growing distrust.

Bestregards. Let me have at least some sort of a reply.

Yours,Lenin

[1]Thecontract with the publishing firm of Maria Malykh (Edelman) was
drawn up after the latter had approached Lenin with an offer to publish a
number of works by him and other Bolshevik writers.

Thecontract never materialised since, as P. P. Rumyantsev informed
Lenin in his reply to the present letter, the C.C., R.S.D.L.P. had
simultaneously begun negotiating in St. Petersburg with the Znaniye
Publishers, founded by K. P. Pyatnitsky and Maxim Gorky. In his reply,
Rumyantsev asked Lenin for permission to sign the contract with Znaniye. On
October 2 (15) Lenin cabled his agreement (see Document 125). The contract
with Znaniye was signed on October 21 (8), 1905, by L. B. Krasin and
P. P. Rumyantsev.

[2]Areference to a conference proposed by the International Socialist
Bureau with a view to uniting the R.S.D.L.P. (see Lenin’s letter to the
I.S.B. of September 16, 1905, present edition, Vol. 9, p. 252).

[3]TheC.C., R.S.D.L.P. informed Lenin in a letter dated October 3 (16),
1905, that it had appointed as its representatives at the conference Lenin,
F. V. Lengnik and P. P. Rumyantsev. Lenin informed the I.S.B. of this on
October 14 (27), 1905 (see present edition, Vol. 9, pp. 390–91).

[4]DnevnikSotsial-Demokrata(Diary of a Social-Democrat) was
published in Geneva by G. V. Plekhanov at irregular and lengthy intervals
from March 1905 to April 1912, 16 issues in all.Dnevnikresumed
publication in Petrograd in 1916, but only one issue came out.

No.2of the publication (August 1905) carried an article by Plekhanov,
“Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (A Letter to the
Editors ofProletary)”, intended as a reply to Lenin’s “On the
Provisional Revolutionary Government. Article One. Plekhanov’s Reference to
History” (see present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 463–74) and accusing Lenin and
the Bolsheviks of Blanquism.